Local Government and Housing Committee, 24 Tachwedd 2022 | Open Senedd

Local Government and Housing Committee, 24 Tachwedd 2022 | Open Senedd

Matthew Dicks

I think the first thing to say, Chair, is that collaboration between housing associations and local authorities has never been better, really. It's always been good, but it got to another level during the pandemic and has continued beyond that, and working together to house more people than ever before. And that continues. But one thing I didn't mention is that, ultimately, the problem here is the historic and systemic undersupply of social affordable housing. That's fundamentally it, because once people get into temporary accommodation, there's nowhere or very little supply to move them on to, particularly—we were talking about this earlier—one-bed accommodation. I think the vast majority of people in temporary accommodation are single people, and there's a severe lack of one-bed accommodation to move them on to. And that's around viability, but it's also around people not wanting to live in these big blocks of one-bed flats, et cetera. So, there's something around that systemic and strategic under-supply of social and affordable housing, which, to be fair, the Welsh Government gets and is addressing. But we're living in these times where the money being invested—what was it, almost £1 billion announced in the last budget round, over three years? Well, that's not worth £1 billion now, is it? So, there are pressures, pressures on the supply chain and skills in terms of actually using the money available to build. So, that's the underlying problem.

And in terms of the temporary accommodation that people are in, it's just not suitable in most cases. Families are sharing one-room bed-and-breakfast facilities, with no space for children to play or study; they share bathroom facilities; there's a lack of cooking facilities, so they rely on take-outs and take-aways, which, given the cost of living, is becoming more problematic, not least for the health of children, going to school on empty stomachs or poor food. And then there's the impact of increased transport costs, because much of this accommodation is away from schools or childcare, to help people work, and then isolation and mental health issues about being away from the communities that you live in. So, there are lots of concerns about not being able to move people on and the types of temporary accommodation. And then we have the issue with the PRS that I was alluding to before. So, it's about how can we support the PRS, in particular, at this stage to stay in the game and ensure that we have enough temporary accommodation to deal with what's coming down the track. I hope that's answered your question, Chair.

Dim cyfieithiad Cymraeg wedi'i gyhoeddi09:09Gwylio #Cofnod swyddogol

Allan Eveleigh

Yes, definitely. We're finding increasing challenges within our general needs housing stock. The direct lets to people facing homelessness, whilst I absolutely understand the reasons for it and agree with them, are putting challenges on some of our neighbourhoods and our communities, because the support and the background knowledge of those individuals is limited compared to some other support provision. We're finding that the number of anti-social behaviour cases, the number of hoarding cases, things like that, really take an awful lot of time for housing staff to manage, and resource as well. In one of our blocks, we've had to employ security guards to allow us to go about our business. A good chunk of that issue is relating to just one individual who was probably not suitable for that property, who was vulnerable, who ended up getting cuckooed and involved in county lines and things. A support setting would have been a better provision for that person, and he now wants to go into a support setting to get him out of this mess that he's found himself in. So, yes, we're absolutely finding challenges in terms of neighbourhood management.

It's the conditions of properties as well—the amount of money that we're having to spend on void properties when they come back to us because they haven't been as well looked after and things like that. We're finding that that's increasing. And, obviously, because there's, potentially, more vulnerable clientele coming in to some of our properties, we're having to spend more money in terms of protecting those people and setting them up on the right footing to make the tenancy sustainable, so the standards of painting and decoration and providing second-hand furniture and things like that to enable people to get off on the right foot. So, there's increasing cost, there's increasing resource input required, and I also think that we need to make sure we're considering—. I know we're going to be looking at rapid rehousing later, but it all meshes together. I wouldn't throw the baby out with the bathwater in terms of supporting different supported options and looking to keep that toolkit as varied as it can be. So, there's definitely a resource issue for our colleagues and what they're dealing with.

Dim cyfieithiad Cymraeg wedi'i gyhoeddi09:25Gwylio #Cofnod swyddogol

Steven Bletsoe

I feel that all eyes are on me to answer that one. I think there's a number of different reasons, and I don't think that you'd find good landlords in the industry disagreeing with the concept of the Renting Homes (Wales) Act. Despite popular opinion, landlords don't want to issue section 21 notices—they don't. They want a good relationship with a good tenant that gives them a long-standing, long-term, stable financial investment. That's what good landlords want. They want to provide good houses. They don't have problems with supplying properties that are fit for human habitation. Everything within the matters and consequences makes sense to good landlords.

Match that with the fact that, at the very last second, a sunset clause was brought in, which hasn't even sat in front of the Chamber yet. The legislation is due to come in on Thursday—a week today—and we have legislation that has not been put in front of the Senedd for completion. That came to the industry extremely lately, and it's changing the way that landlords look at things. Landlords feel put upon. There are very few people who will feel sorry for residential landlords; the way they are painted by certain sections is that they all walk around with briefcases full of £50 notes. The majority of them aren't; the majority of them want to provide a service to an industry that needs it at the minute. We're discussing people living in temporary accommodation. The PRS wants to support those people. They want to provide good houses. They need them provided to them. But when you come in with that sunset clause change at the very last second, days before the implementation of the Act, it spooks the market. There is constant concern over the incoming rent controls. There are always problems around eviction bans. It is a multitude of things, and we at the NRLA don't stand against the Renting Homes (Wales) Act. We've embraced it, we've endorsed it, we've released our standard occupation contract in the last couple of days, and I hope that the periodical is available tomorrow, or today would be even better. But it spooks the market, and I would certainly point to this bringing in of the sunset clause as being very detrimental to the implementation of it.

Dim cyfieithiad Cymraeg wedi'i gyhoeddi09:31Gwylio #Cofnod swyddogol

Shayne Hembrow

Yes, I partly agree with my colleague, because I think perhaps we have not made enough change over the last 10 years—or longer, to be honest, because I think it goes well beyond 10 years—to achieve a significantly different result. I think lots of things have been done, though, so there are positive benefits. The £1 billion that Matt mentioned and the commitment of the Welsh Government to supporting social housing development over those last 10 years has made an enormous difference and has mitigated, I think, quite significantly the scale of the problem that we would be facing if that had not been done, because lots of housing has been provided.

That said, I think that we do have a significant mismatch between the housing that we need to provide if we're going to address the number of people in temporary accommodation and the homes that are being built by the private sector or by the social sector. And if you look over the last 10 years, only about 10 per cent of the homes that have been built are one bedroom, and yet you've got 8,000 to 10,000 people needing one-bedroomed accommodation in temporary accommodation, that exist in temporary accommodation at the moment. We have that mismatch in planning terms, and we've had that for a very long time and the reluctance of lots of people concerned in the sector to build more one-bedroomed accommodation, and addressing that is a very brave move in policy terms and in planning terms, to stop the huge volume of three-bed homes that we also need built, and move to something that actually matches closer to the huge demand that we're facing. That we haven't done and we haven't addressed, but I think the commitment and the funding that has been put in, when you compare and contrast that to England, where you have very, very low numbers of social housing provided, we've had significant numbers—well over 3,000 in the last year—and that has made an enormous difference.

Dim cyfieithiad Cymraeg wedi'i gyhoeddi09:38Gwylio #Cofnod swyddogol

Dr Steffan Evans

Yes, I guess there are two points I want to make, picking up what Shayne was saying there as well. I guess the first is that I don't know whether we really have a vision for what we want housing in Wales to be like. Building those one-beds is part of that longer term thinking, isn't it, and about what we want to achieve. And by that I mean that we talk a lot about unintended consequences, but actually what is the unintended consequence? Do we want, basically, the tenure mix to stay roughly what it is now but just have more housing? Do we want more social housing, fewer owner-occupiers? These are all questions that—. Actually, we talk about unintended consequences, but we need to know what vision we have for the sector to know whether it's a negative consequence if landlords are leaving the sector, or not. We're not having those conversations, maybe.

Thinking of the more medium term, sorting this out is going to take time. You're not going to build tens of thousands of social housing properties in the next two to three years; it's going to take time. But the problem we've got is immediate, and it's obviously right that we take action in the immediate term to help people, but are the steps we could be taking that help people in the short term that help move us to where we want to be in the longer term. So, that's why some of the questions you've asked around purchasing properties, I think, are really important ones, because that's a way to increase supply now, find accommodation for someone now, and it actually moves us towards somewhere where we might want to be in the longer term, rather than maybe getting stuck in the trap of building more temporary accommodation, because we need that but actually that doesn't really resolve anything necessarily in the longer term because we're just moving the problem from waiting lists for temporary accommodation to having loads of people in temporary accommodation and nowhere to move them on. So, I think there is a need definitely to do the short-term stuff but thinking about how does that fit into where we want to be heading in the medium to longer term as well.

Dim cyfieithiad Cymraeg wedi'i gyhoeddi09:40Gwylio #Cofnod swyddogol

Shayne Hembrow

I think it's a really difficult question, to be honest. The move to rapid rehousing is extremely difficult for all the reasons that we've discussed up to now in terms of if you look at the number of presentations from people who are homeless or rough sleeping and you just look at the volume of that against the supply of available accommodation, you're not going to house those people with the available supply. So, if I'm honest, I don't think a transition to three to five years is realistic at all; I think it's many multiples of that. You're looking at a decade or more, and only then if you address the supply issues.

If we look at the capability of the system, just in terms of how many people present and how many are available that would actually match what those people need, there is a mismatch, so those people will automatically go into temporary accommodation. I think rapid rehousing, though, is the solution to ending homelessness. We do need to ensure that homelessness is brief, it is rare and if you spend time in temporary accommodation, it's very short before you move into settled accommodation. But we will only address that if we do increase supply of the right homes in the right locations.

Wales and West work in 15 of the 22 local authority areas, and we've been involved in a number of the discussions. I think, for the local authorities in the year that they've had to date, it's been very difficult to prepare the transition plan for rapid rehousing on the back of homelessness plans and a number of other action plans, which is why a good number of the local authorities have been unable to complete a transition plan that is inclusive and has involved all partners, as they would have liked to, so, a number have been more interim transition plans, with more work to be done over the future. I think 15 of the 22 have been submitted, some of those have had lots and lots of involvement; I know that my organisation and others have been deeply involved, but in other areas, they've not been able to do that. So, I think it's been very difficult for them.

Dim cyfieithiad Cymraeg wedi'i gyhoeddi09:56Gwylio #Cofnod swyddogol